At INFODAD, we rank everything we review with plus signs, on a scale from one (+) [disappointing] to four (++++) [definitely worth considering]. We mostly review (+++) or better items. Very rarely, we give an exceptional item a fifth plus. We are independent reviewers and, as parents, want to help families learn which books, music, and computer-related items we and our children love...or hate. INFODAD is a service of TransCentury Communications, Inc., Fort Myers, Florida, infodad@gmail.com.

January 23, 2014

(+++) UNDEAD ACTIVITIES

PopCap has a big hit with
the thoroughly ridiculous video game Plants
vs. Zombies, and it is scarcely surprising that spinoffs in the
non-video-game world have been, um, growing rapidly. Never mind that the
spinoffs, like the game itself, seem already to have eaten the brains of
participants – the whole Plants vs.
Zombies ethos is designed to be mindless fun. Even on the printed page, in
two new Plants vs. Zombies activity
books, the whole idea is to have as much fun as possible while doing so little
thinking that it seems as if zombies really have eaten your brains. Thus, Plant Your Path Junior Novel does not
require readers to follow a plot from start to finish – nothing that
complicated! This is one of those choose-your-own storybooks, in which you read a snippet of
narrative, then pick which of two choices you would like to follow, then go to
whatever page that choice leads to. The story itself is just like other Plants vs. Zombies tales – there is, in
fact, only one story in this whole world, which involves running away from
zombies and using plants to fight them. Sample narrative: “Poof! Poof! Poof! The little Puffshrooms pummel the zombies with
poisonous fumes. Magnetshrooms tear the helmets off Football Zombies and rip
the screens from the bony hands of Screen Door Zombies. Hypno-shrooms turn the
zombies on each other.” And so on – and on and on and on, but only in little
bits before another fork in the road, or fork in the story, has readers
deciding which way to go next. There are a couple of endings in which the
zombies eat readers’ brains and a couple in which they do not, but the story is
sufficiently brainless either way to be amusing for fans of the video game on
which it is based.

As for Brain Food, it doesn’t really require much thinking, which sort of makes
sense. From coloring Crazy Dave to answering trivia questions to drawing
anti-zombie plants to counting zombies to unscrambling words to filling in the
blanks of a story to finding the differences between two zombies, the book is
filled with simple, non-brain-intensive games and puzzles that won’t really
feed readers’ brains but at least won’t eat them. There are secret messages to
decode, puzzles to solve, pictures to finish, dots to connect, mazes to work
through, even some tic-tac-toe games to play. But most of the fun here comes
from giving fans chances to see the characters they enjoy from the whole Plants vs. Zombies world: Zombot, Dr.
Zomboss, Gargantuar and Imp, Jack-in-the-Box Zombie, Newspaper Zombie,
Buckethead Zombie, Pogo Zombie and others. In fact, one recurring activity here
involves looking at silhouettes of zombies and guessing which ones are which.
There is nothing particularly difficult in this book and nothing particularly
outlandish except for the underlying premise itself. As a way for Plants vs. Zombies fans to pass the time
when they are not immersed in their video-game universe, Brain Food is silly fun that – who knows? – may even make fans’
brains more spicily attractive to zombies!Oops…hmm…could that be the insidious point of the whole thing?